Customer expectations in the banking industry are evolving like never before. Even though there are digital banking facilities, digital native and tech-savvy consumers are always looking for a lot more and expect a frictionless experience in everyday banking.
When we think of the days before digital, when it was inevitable to visit your local bank branch for even the most basic transaction or financial advice, it seems bizarre today. Back then bankers needed to understand our needs in person, check our credit history and financial profile to offer banking services and products, which was a highly time-consuming and tedious process, especially considering the millennials who expect nothing less than seamless access to banking on digital channels. Recent studies have found that more than 70% of millennials prefer using digital banking services to going to a bank.
This is creating increasing pressure on banking and financial institutions to innovate, undergo a digital transformation, and employ intelligent technology to thrive and beat the competition. More BFSIs are now looking to devise and employ a conversational strategy to offer a smarter and personalized customer experience. And one of the most promising ways the banking and financial institutions are trying to meet this demand is by deploying AI chatbots for customer experience. They are becoming popular, thanks to chatbots enabling them to make their banking service more human, offer a personal touch and create a superior and differentiating customer experience.
Round the Clock Customer Service
Nine to six banking hours are a thing of the past since today convenience is one of the most vital and critical factors based on which customers choose a business. This is particularly important today since millennials and Gen-Z are soon going to be the dominant customers for BFSI and they are digital natives. This would mean that for them banking falls into the category of tasks that must compete with other commitments like work, and relaxation, which gets pushed into the evenings, which are mostly after traditional banking hours. Hence, to be attentive to your customer starts with acknowledging how your customer demographics are changing. Employing chatbots would mean that they can offer virtual customer service to any group of customers round the clock, from anywhere in the world.
Similarly, chatbots are a great tool to proactively engage with customers and convert them. The bots can be deployed within an app or on the website, to pre-empt customers with quick answers and recommendations. When customers are timely engaged, opportunities to convert them into leads are much higher.
Augmenting Human Resources
A common notion that employees and others have about technologies like AI is that they are going to replace the human element in a process in organizations. But chatbots in most industries like BFSI are employed to ensure that they augment the customer service teams and help them meet the rising customer expectations and needs in terms of speed, convenience, and more and create a differentiating customer experience. Chatbots can ensure that teams like customer service are offloaded from routine tasks and enable them to focus better on more important aspects, thereby increasing their operational efficiency and productivity.
Customer Tone Analysis
When processes become AI-powered it’s not just NLP that is employed, but it can be as advanced as sentiment analysis in the case of chatbots. Sentiment analysis features could allow reporting on how customers feel when they communicate with bots, almost similar to talking to human agents. In addition to that, the algorithms are continuously being refined to better pick up customer sentiment and precise tones while interacting with them. Sentiment analysis algorithms use text analysis and natural language processing to classify words as either positive, negative, or neutral. This allows banks to gain an overview of how their customers feel about the interaction and decide what to do next to better serve them, like for example, if it’s a complex issue, it can redirect them to a human customer service specialist who knows how to resolve the issue.
Personal Financial Advisor
If your thought conversational Ai only involves answering customer queries and requests, gone are those days since advanced chatbots employed by banking and financial institutions today are trained to inform clients about their financial health even. They can be your customer’s financial manager or a personal banker, who analyses their financial health, buying patterns, and credit information to offer key banking and financial product recommendations and services. Like a personal finance advisor, banking chatbots will “learn” customer spending habits, analyze past transactions, and then leverage it to provide saving strategies and tips to help them manage their finances- a novel initiative missing from a typical digital banking experience!
Today, almost every banking and financial institution, of varying sizes around the globe, is on the lookout to create differentiation and gain the upper hand, especially with the industry becoming highly competitive. BFSI is catching up to the market at large when it comes to AI chatbot adoption, with customers always wanting more from their digital experiences. Hence, conversational, knowledgeable, and emotionally intelligent bots are critical in helping these enterprises lead the digital by helping them talk the talk. Intelion Systems, with disruptive technology solutions and digital-first strategies, are helping companies navigate their way through complex technology problems and achieve agile, scalable outcomes. And we can help you rebuild your customer experience strategy with our innovative and futuristic Conversational AI solutions.
